Chipping away at the liberty foundation

Here’s another couple of unrelated events that will further erode what little liberty we have left — see if they don’t.

In this corner, we have a questionable search warrant served on Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney.

Seems that the FBI, which really hasn’t had the best couple of weeks, acted on a tip from Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, and executed what was called a no-knock warrant on the attorney’s office, taking files, communications and other items.

The raid was in relation, many believe, to the latest scandal leveled at Trump, that of his alleged affair with a porn star, Stormy Daniels, and a payment of hush money through Cohen.

There are several questions that come to mind here, not the least of which is why does the investigative arm of the federal government give a hoot about an affair which happened between two seemingly consenting adults, neither of which were in public office?

The tip itself comes from a special prosecutor, whose mandate was to investigate Russian collusion during the 2016 election and its possible effects on the results. Why is he snooping around in a sordid affair?

The biggest concern of mine, though, is how can communications, such as emails, between an attorney and his client be seized? That is probably the biggest offense, the violation of attorney/client privilege. No one can expect good representation if they can’t rely on their attorney keeping their confidence. That is directly in conflict with our Constitution.

Next up, we have the congressional hearings with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame.

You’ve probably heard of Facebook. What you might not know is that your information was being used improperly by a firm called Cambridge Analytica. Frankly, that was allowed, based on the user agreements people agreed to when signing up for Facebook.

Do with that what you will; I’m more concerned with the after effects, such as those hearings. While the senators certainly discussed privacy issues as well as a bias against most things conservative, my issue with this is why the government has chosen to get involved.

See, right now, Facebook is a free-ish site, ostensibly covered by the First Amendment protection of free speech.

After these escapades, though, I have a sneaking suspicion that the government will use this as an entry point to first regulation, and then control and ownership. All under the guise of doing something — as in showing the people they are being protected from their own ignorance.

This, to me, is a civil matter, and should be handled civilly. The government needs to step off its meddling. It also needs to end the special investigation, which to this point, has uncovered no election meddling and is just a waste of taxpayer money.

•This week’s Headline of Note come from just about any news outlet you can think of: Mom apologizes for letting her son wear X-rated McDonald’s shirt.

Yes, we all can agree that it was dumb to have an elementary school student wear such an item. But I can’t seem to find the logic of this becoming a viral story like it did.

See, at one time, many many moons ago, my brother wore a slightly offensive shirt to school (it involved a martian and an offensive gesture). He was sent home and told to change.